Abstract
The authors come with the idea that foundations for the patient's concept of illness could be traced to childhood and so they study children's concepts of both acute and chronic illnesses. The authors argue that for specific clinical work with patients we cannot rely only for data gathered by questionnaires.
An individual concept of illness must be understood including the qualitative methods for its assessment. A suggestion is made that the education of public should be changed so that medical professionals first find out patients' the individual opinions about both their illness and the treatment and only then they may attempt at correcting the appearing misconceptions.
Not only individual opinions should be searched for. It is necessary to examine the concepts of illness prevailing in public, the so called social representations of illness.
Only through such careful study both the marginal and prevailing public ideas could be traced.